The Most Popular Free to Play MMORPG

We all know World of Warcraft from Blizzard Entertainment is the most successful pay to play MMORPG. So What’s the most popular and successful free to play MMORPG? You might be thinking it’s something 3D and popular like Runes of Magic…. Dungeons and Dragons Online or Even Atlantica Online, but you’re wrong. The title of the most popular free to play MMORPG belongs to MapleStory – a 2D fantasy MMORPG which I’m sure most of you have already heard of. Since Nexon released MapleStory in the U.S. Nexon has been making a killing from the game. Aside from perhaps Kart Rider in South Korea, MapleStory is the most popular free MMORPG Nexon offers. If you look at Nexon’s 2009 revenues, it’s something huge like $500 million. If you look at World of Warcraft’s revenues, it’s something like $600 million.

This isn’t exactly a fair comparison as Nexon publishers numerous other games besides MapleStory – Dungeon Fighter Online, Combat Arms, Atlantica Online (through nDoors), Sudden Attack (Through GameHi) and Vindictus, but these games aren’t nearly as popular as Nexon’s MapleStory. Still though, I think it’s crazy that Nexon is almost making as much money as World of Warcraft. I suspect that in 2010 Nexon will have more revenues than World of Warcraft’s revenues. Again, I understand it’s not a fair comparison, as I’m coming some 15+ games to one game.

What’s the second most popular free to play MMORPG? Probably RuneScape from Jagex. I know a lot of people hate RuneScape, but the game is absurdly popular. Just look how many servers the game has! Jagex recently launched War of Legends, which aims to compete with Caesary from LeKool and Grepolis from InnoGames. These browser based strategy MMOs are actually really popular too. Nowhere near as popular as either MapleStory or RuneScape though.

So there you have it. The two most popular free to play MMORPGs are MapleStory and RuneScape. I still play MapleStory regularly. I tried WonderKing Online, but it didn’t offer the same amount of variety that MapleStory had (Classes, dungeons, skills, areas, etc). I never really liked RuneScape though.